Goodbye
by Shiba Ayame
Summary: "Stop." He used to... but he doesn't anymore. Cloud has to do it, no matter how much he'd rather have it the other way. Closeph, shonen-ai, game ending revisited. Oneshot.


锘?'m taking a break from a couple of ongoing fics (ones that I should be writing, but I has writer's block .) to bring to you an angsty, pentive, tragic shonen-ai drabble.

Takes place at the ending of the game. If you don't want FFVII spoilers, GO BACK AND PLAY IT! No, seriously! It's been eleven years since it was released! You should know what happens by now!

Warning: Shonen-ai, angst, stuff that didn't really happen but I wish it did, all that fun stuff, etc...

Disclaimer: If I owned FFVII, I'd be the driving force behind the PS3 remake. With optional yaoi smut scenes.

Inspired (shocklingly) by a beautiful illustration on HentaiPalm, it can be found here, obviously without the brackets and the extra spaces. http : / / www . hentaipalm . com / galleries . php / view / image / id / 124483

Goodbye

Oneshot

lolololololololol

Once he got back home, everything would be all right. Sure, all he had to do was say it time and time again in his mind, force himself to believe it.

But Cloud knew what he had just done - it wasn't something he'd wanted to do, one of those "nessescary evils" you had to overcome. Everyone has things that they do for the sake of the maority, even when what you believe is the opposite.

"If I ever do something you don't want me to, just say 'stop,' and I will."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

More than once, Cloud had told him to "stop." He used to listen, before he started keeping to himself, before he'd randomly lash out at anything that looked at him wrong, anyone who spoke to him with the slightest trace of sarcasm, before his eyes were visibly full of malice.

"Stop." But he went ahead anyway, farther into the basement, learning.

"Stop." He wouldn't listen, killing his childhood friend's father in the process, almost doing the same to his daughter as well as his best friend and mentor.

"Stop." The look on his face, reflecting off the cool glass, the lighted retaining tube casting an eerie glow everywhere but on Cloud, standing in his shadow... all of it, and the blonde knew that nothing could stop him now, not even an army, and most definitely not that simple, four-letter word.

Cloud learned not to trust such trivial things very quickly. They say that experience is the best teacher, and he'd had his share of experiences.

The setting was almost all too familiar to Cloud; the resemblance to back then was almost overbearing. He'd chosen to do this alone, though it wasn't as if it was a full-blown choice, it was just the way the rock beneath their feet crumbled, leaving him at the bottom of a humid pit, close to Gaia's core. The heat, he remembered the heat well from that night - nothing but that bright red all around, save for the tones of flesh and that hair. That hair that the cadets he'd bunked with swore was spun moonlight.

Cloud ran; his sword had clattered to the ground, Tifa shouting at him to "Get the hell out of there!" but her cries fell on deaf ears. The world was quite literally crumbling around him, but for the first time in his life, Cloud couldn't have cared less. He needed this - he knew he was a sinner, he had been the first time he'd killed someone under the Shin Ra army banner - he needed that redemption.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, barely detectable over the shattering of rock around them, wanting so badly to reach out to him and wipe the blood trickling down his forehead, to curl up with him and accept a fate none of his friends wished for him, constantly being assured that everything was all right. Like the way it used to be.

The cruelty, the fire was gone from his eyes; standing there, shirtless, the heat forcing his hair to flare out, it appeared as if he were some kind of god, just like Jenova had made him think he was. A pale arm extended itself in Cloud's direction, who grasped the hand at the end of the arm and walked closer, wrapping his arms around the naked torso covered in old scars and new gashes. Blood was dripping down onto his face as the man his friends considered the enemy held him close, just like old times.

"I'm so sorry," Cloud apologized again, although the look in the other's eyes said that a second apology wasn't needed. He was resigned to his death, the man figured that he deserved it, for all the crimes he had committed, all time times that he had ignored the simple command he'd pledged to follow.

"I should be the one to apologize," said the taller man, but paused when he noticed the swirling blue-green mass of translucent waves encompassing the area, ready to bring him home. Perhaps the world accepts everyone, because what it all comes down to is that everyone is just that little bit of undeniable human. "I'm sorry that it came to this."

"No," the younger one reassured, "It's not your fault, you weren't yourself." His head lifted, face tilting up to capture those lips he hadn't felt in what felt like eons, not wanting to miss the last chance he had.

The tendrils of ocean blue life encased him now, pulling him away from the physical world into the spiritual, his body fading away. "I promise that I'll do whatever you tell me to."

"Stay."

The silver-haired man smiled. "You know I can't."

Cloud pondered, his mind racing to come up with a command, one last comand, before there was no-one to give the command to. "Wait for me."

A smile. "That, I can do."

And with that answer the Lifestream covered him, leaving nothing in its wake but the scene they'd been in, rocks still falling, Tifa still yelling down to him, his lover's blood still on Cloud's face, that smell that was purely his clinging to his knitted shirt.

Willing himself not to cry - He couldn't cry, wasn't allowed to shed a tear, he was the hero who'd just saved the planet - He retrieved his sword, the weight of his dreams heavier than ever.

"I'll see you later."

lolololololololol

Ok, so maybe that was more of a drabble than a oneshot, and it was rather wordy. I love writing serious scenes like that, but the urge to throw humor in is almost CRAZY .

Bloody hell, I had to take this down, open it in NeoOffice and fix the spacing because apparently FF dot net doesn't accept simple text spacing .

You know you want to review. 


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